First Woman to Earn an NCAA Football Scholarship

At the point when Becca Longo marked her letter of plan to play school football on National Signing Day on Febuary 1, she was amped up for the individual development in her own particular life.

Minutes after the fact, she found that it was a tremendous, history-production minute for ladies in games, as well.

Longo is the main lady to get school football grant from a D-II school or higher. She marked with at Adams State University in Alamosa, Colorado, as a kicker, a similar position she played in secondary school.

“I had no clue,” Longo tells PEOPLE.”It didn’t generally kick in until two or three hours after, I just thought I was marking a bit of paper to go play the game I cherish once more. Indeed, even right now, despite everything i’m stunned. It simply doesn’t feel genuine.”

Growing up with a sibling 11 years more established than she was, 18-year-old Longo said there wasn’t much open door for shared interests between the kin — aside from football, their “glad medium.” Her more seasoned sibling played on his secondary school group, and would go around a ball with his sister on the ends of the week. There was a female player on his secondary school group, as well, so he didn’t consider anything it.

So when secondary school moved around, Longo went for the football group her sophomore year, making the JV squad. She exchanged schools the following year, and in light of tenets that apply to exchanging schools, needed to sit out her lesser year. She returned for her senior year, and began imagining that football was something she needed to seek after at a university level.

Longo recorded a highlights film to grandstand her aptitudes, and send it out to various schools. She got various reactions, one of which was from Adams State. After her season wrapped up, the hostile organizer went to Longo’s main residence of Chandler, Arizona, to talk with her face to face about going to the school — and a potential football grant.

After a month, she went by Adams State, and “experienced passionate feelings for” the school.

“Everybody was so warm and inviting,” she says of her visit to the school. “I simply cherished every little thing about it.”

Becca Longo

Since her story has begun increasing national consideration, Longo says she’s got bolster from individuals everywhere throughout the nation. In any case, that hasn’t been the situation for the greater part of her football vocation up to this point. She got pushback for her choice to play football in any case, and after that, to seek after the game at a university level, “constantly,” she says.

“I Got a Lot of Negativity”

Prior to her first-historically speaking secondary school football game, Longo, similar to whatever remains of her colleagues, wore her shirt to class. Incalculable colleagues ridiculed her, inquiring as to whether she was wearing her own pullover or her sweethearts.

“I got a great deal of cynicism, and individuals saying I couldn’t do it,” she said. “In any case, that is exactly what pushed me to do what I’m doing.”

Be that as it may, the general population have never been definitely not in her corner? Her Basha High School colleagues, whom Longo calls her “siblings,” and her secondary school mentor. They’ve never treated her any uniquely in contrast to whatever other individual from the group, she says — they were even the ones who urged her to attempt to play in school. The experience of playing close by them is one Longo says she’ll love until the end of time.